Geotextile fabrics are commonly installed over the ground, to provide soil reinforcement and/or stabilization so less gravel is needed for this, before laying down covering layers. Such geotextile fabrics are used for example in road construction as underlayments over which are laid down roadway surfaces such as asphalt, concrete, gravel, dirt, or aggregate. Conventional geotextile roadway underlayment fabrics generally include a flat warp fiber across the entire width of the fabric in conjunction with a fibrillated weft fiber. While such existing geotextile underlayments provide some benefits in soil reinforcement and/or stabilization, and generally provide the coverage necessary for filtration (to keep sediment from passing through), there remain areas for improvements.
For example, conventional geotextile underlayments limit the amount of water that can pass through them, which tends to cause rainwater to sheet off to the roadway edges and cause erosion issues, or to simply pool on the roadway surface. And in applications in which the roadway is temporary, such as for roads on farmland temporarily used in the extraction of oil and gas, it can be difficult to locate the geotextile underlayments so they can be removed, and sometimes they are missed and left behind intact where they can cause damage during subsequent use of the land, such as damage to farm equipment when the land is next farmed.
Accordingly, it can be seen that needs exist for improvements in geotextile underlayments to provide for increased water pass-through drainage and increased ease of locating them for removal. It is to the provision of solutions meeting these and/or other needs that the present invention is primarily directed.